Chapter 80
Lark
My head pounds as I blink awake and I groan. My entire body feels lethargic. What happened?
I blink a few times to clear away the blurriness from sleep and instantly panic floods me.
I’m not in our room in our house or at the clubhouse.
Above me are steel rafters and a metal roof.
What happened? And how did I get here?
Raising my hands to my temples, I massage them as I try to remember what happened.
I remember talking to Erica and her saying we need a new keg. Nathan and I argued and then I went back and unlocked the back room.
“Fuck,” I curse as my eyes snap wide open again and my body goes rigid.
Zac.
Fucking Zac Crawford drugged and tased me right after I unlocked the door.
Fuck, is Nathan alright? Did he come after me?
Shit, I hope Zac didn’t hurt him. I know Nathan can fight, but I have no idea what Zac’s capable of.
What if… No, I can’t think that. I can’t go down the ‘what if’ rabbit hole.
It will just drive me even crazier with worry.
I need to believe Nathan is still alive.
I also need to apologize to him when I see him.
A shiver racks me and I can see my breath in the air each time I breathe.
I take stock of my body. I’m sore but nothing feels broken, thank God.
As I shift, I realize I’m covered in a thick blanket and I’m grateful that the only spots where I feel the blanket on my skin is my arms. Lifting the blanket, I’m relieved to see that I’m still wearing my work clothes.
Wiggling my toes, I frown when I realize I’m not wearing my work boots—just my socks.
Shifting, I groan as I push to a sitting position and look down.
I’m lying on a relatively thin mattress, but at least it looks clean.
Same for the pillow. I swing my legs over the side of the bed and the sound of metal scraping against something reaches my ears.
Lifting the blanket, my eyes widen as my anger rises.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” I snarl.
The fucker shackled my ankle to the fucking bed!
I tug on the chain and damn near growl when nothing happens.
Peering over the edge of the bed, my anger rises when I realize he’s also bolted the damn bed to the cement floor!
Grumbling, I look closer at the chain and shackle.
They’re new. Not rusty like the rest of this fricking warehouse.
He’s also used a heavy padlock to connect the chain to the shackle, and I grin.
If I can find a couple pieces of wire, I might be able to pick the lock.
Next to the bed is a bucket with a couple of rolls of toilet paper on the ground next to it.
My lip curls in disgust at the thought of using it.
There are no windows in here but there are a couple of doors in this room.
From what I can see through the small windows in the doors, or what remains of the windows that is, there are more rooms surrounding this room.
Turning, I stop and stare in shock at what’s in front of me. Before, I’d just noticed the boards when I was looking for windows, but now I’m truly seeing it.
And what’s on them.
My mouth opens and closes a few times, but no sound comes out.
Fuck.
Oh fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck!
In front of me are three very large cork boards on wheels.
Each one has hundreds and I mean hundreds of pictures tacked onto them.
Most of them are of me but there are also pictures of Ma, Granny, Miracle, Khloe and even of the guys in the club.
Like with the room in Zac’s house, he also has pictures of my house and the supper club going up in flames.
, However, there are more of them here than at his house.
He also has a smaller board that has pictures of the Coxes and, surprisingly, Darren.
My gaze snaps back to the pictures of Ma, Granny, and all my friends.
If he’s been watching them so closely as well…
Fuck… I snap my eyes closed, trying to clear my mind of scenario after scenario, each one worse than the last. Of what Zac would have done to them if he got his hands on them.
Of what he’d do to them if I didn’t come to him.
Fuck. This is not good. He’s even more unhinged than we thought. A faint sound thuds behind me and I whirl around, scowling as Zac walks towards me.
“What in the actual fuck, Zac?” I hiss as I gesture to the pictures. “How long have you been fucking stalking me? A lot of these are from when you were dating my best friend!”
He has the gall to just shrug and look smug as fuck.
“Khloe was a means to an end. You wouldn’t accept my invitations so I had to find a way to get close to you somehow.
She was an easy target. When the fire didn’t work, I knew I had to do something else to get you away from that fucking club.
It’s a good thing you got rid of your guard dog tonight.
I was prepared to slice his throat to get to you,” he says as he pulls out a wicked looking knife.
My blood boils at his nonchalance way of talking about how he’d kill Nathan and about how he had treated my best friend.
“You played with her feelings just to get close to me?! You’d slit my friend’s throat to get him out of the way?
You’re a monster. A fucking asshole,” I seethe.
“Why the fuck did you do it? Why, Zac? Why would you make it impossible for us to get out of the house and then light it on fire. I could have died that night! My mom and grandma could have died! You’re the reason why I have all these fucking burns on my body!
If you really cared about me, then why the fuck would you do something like that? ”
He waves his hand nonchalantly in the air.
“I would never have let you die,” he says, and I note that he purposefully says nothing about Ma and Granny.
His face twists and I think I know where he’s going to go with this even before he speaks.
“I’m the reason the firefighters got there when they did.
Since you wouldn’t come to me, I came to you and was supposed to be the one that rescued you.
Not that fucking kiss ass! He’s the reason you got those burns, it wasn’t because of me. ”
“Yes, it was because of you!” I cry out as I raise my arms in the air in frustration. “You were the one that fucking lit my house on fire. Not Erik. Not anyone else. You. Everything that happened that night is because of you!”
His lips curl in a sneer. “You were brainwashed, Lark. I overheard multiple conversations about what your family thinks of me. They were getting in the way. I needed to take everything away from you so that you could be with me and I could teach you the right way to behave.”
What in the actual fuck?!
I stomp toward him, wanting to punch the fucker and wail on him so badly, but the chain jerks my body back before I can reach him.
The fucker is standing right outside of my reach and his smug smirk just adds to my anger.
He leans forward so that he’s inches from my face and my fingers twitch with the urge to ball my hand up into a fist and punch him.
His eyes dart down, clocking my twitching, and he shakes his head.
“See, this is another reason why I needed to get you away from those fucking bikers. You’ve become more violent and that isn’t you, Lark. You’re pure. You don’t need to be surrounded by the darkness that follows the Steel Archangel’s everywhere they go.”
I throw my arms up in the air as I roll my eyes.
“I’m not ‘too pure’ as you call it. You don’t even fucking know me, Zac!
I haven’t changed at all! I’ve always been like this!
Me! I’ve always been true to who I am! I would never, ever change who I am just because someone demands it,” I snarl, purposefully drawing out the word ‘demands’ because if he’s anything like Darren, then he wants to break me too.
Not once have I ever been described as ‘too pure’. Besides, if he only knew what I’d done to his cousin then he’d most definitely know I’m not ‘too pure’. Then again, I don’t know how close he is to Darren. If he knew what I’d done to him, that could cause him to become even more unhinged.
“Yes, you have! You were sweet and pure before you let that bastard and his friends into your life and allowed him to put his hands on you!”
“No, I wasn’t!” I yell back at him. “You’ve been stalking me for years from just a quick look at these pictures.
In all that time, you’ve obviously never really watched me.
You only saw what you wanted to see! You’ve built me up in your mind to be someone that isn’t even remotely close to who I am in reality! ”
In the back of my mind, I know I shouldn’t be riling him up like this, but I can’t help it. The bastard is as thickheaded and as crazy as his cousin.
“What makes you think you have any control over my life? Only I am the one that decides what I do or who I am friends with or who I am with in a relationship. No one else. So, if you think kidnapping me is going to suddenly make me like you, you’re even more insane than I thought you were before!”
God, this is like Darren all over again!
His eyes darken further and he steps closer. “I didn’t kidnap you! I’m rescuing you!” he bellows.
I scoff and roll my eyes as I purposefully shake the leg that’s shackled so the chain rattles. “Yeah, chaining me to the floor of an abandoned warehouse with a bucket to piss in sure screams ‘rescued’ instead of ‘kidnapped’,” I reply using air quotes.
“I only did that so you wouldn’t run back to those murderers,” he snarls before turning away from me and running his hands roughly through his hair. “Those fuckers raped and killed my sister for fuck’s sake! I couldn’t watch them do the same to you!”
I frown and play innocent. “They aren’t rapists. They aren’t murderers. Not one of them has ever harmed me or anyone else. Ever.”
He gives me a disbelieving look and I cross my arms, standing my ground.
They’d never rape a woman. To them, women and children are to be cherished and protected.
As for the murdering part, the guys don’t go around killing whoever they want or for no reason at all.
They only do it when someone they love is in danger.
As for Luscious, she very much deserved her death for what she did to Mae.
She would have been sold off as a sex slave and then killed when she was of no use to them for fucks sake.
Yes, Luscious definitely deserved her fate, but I can’t exactly tell Zac any of that.
Zac takes a couple of large strides forward and is hovering over me again. “Yes, they did! They killed Jenna!” he screams in my face.
I shake my head. “No, they didn’t kill Luscious,” I reply, purposefully using Jenna’s club name.
“They didn’t rape her either. She was a club bunny and voluntarily had sex with the men.
Then, she quit and left town when the guys made it clear they weren’t going to take her for an Old Lady.
It’s not our fault if she never contacted you again after she left.
Maybe she had a reason to never contact you to tell you where she was going. ”
I know for a fact that there was a reason Luscious stayed away from the family her mother married into. Every one of them is an abusive asshole.
He spins on his heel, stalking away from me towards a table he has nearby, grabs a wrench and tosses it across the room. His breathing deepens and his shoulders visibly rise and fall with each breath.
“No,” he finally says. “I know the truth about Jenna just like I know the real you. That club,” he says, snarling as he says the word ‘club’, “has brainwashed you and changed you. I’ve been watching you for years, Lark. Years. And now I’ll finally have what I’ve worked so hard for.”
“No, you don’t. I’ve never liked you, Zac.
Never. Hell, I could barely stand to be around you when you were dating Khloe!
I mean, why the hell would I want to be with someone that drugs me, tases me, and chains me to a fucking bed?
” I say as I once again shake the leg that’s shackled so that the chain rattles again and I scoff again. “No, I’ll never be with you. Ever.”
He gives me a knowing smirk as he turns back towards me and a chill races down my spine that has nothing to do with the coldness in the room.
“Soon, my Little Songbird. Soon you’ll see that you will in fact be mine.
Now, I suggest you rest because my guests will be here in about an hour.
” With that he turns on his heel and heads towards the door.
“Oh,” he says, calling over his shoulder.
“And don’t even think about activating the tracker you let those biker scum inject into you.
There are jammers all around this warehouse.
” He says as he twirls his finger in the air as emphasis and my stomach sinks.
A second later, his maniacal laughter fills the air as if he can sense my dread.
My fingers go to my hip instinctively and a moment later, the door slams shut as he leaves and the sound of his boots clomping through the warehouse slowly fades.
My lips thin as my gaze roams around the room, but I can’t spot anything that could be a jammer.
Python showed me what some of them looked like just the other day.
I hum as I look around again, this time looking for cameras.
A second later, I decide to say screw it and press the spot on my hip three times just in case the asshole was lying.
I don’t see my phone anywhere so I’m guessing he ditched that along with my boots.
I gasp as I remember the jewelry I put on this morning.
Python gave me a few different sets so that it wouldn’t look suspicious if I constantly wore the same jewelry.
My hands go to my ears, feeling the little diamond studs still there.
Then my hand lowers to my neck, grasping the little bear pendant like a lifeline.
There are now three ways to track me. My body slumps as I scowl.
So long as he really doesn’t have a jammer, that is.